The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-08-29
WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY.
MALE AND FEMALE MADE FOR A
SPECIFIC WORK.

w
Regnant nt-Rev. Talmage Puts Him.
self on Record as Against Femininity
that Aspires to Pants-Home the
Kingdom Woman Should Rule.
THE HAMPToNs, Aug. 2s.-''Woman's
Opportunity" was the subject of discourse
by the Rev T. Dewitt Talmage, D. D., to-
day; and his text, $50 God created man in
His own image, the image of God created
He him; male and female created He them y
Genesis i, "a. Following is the sermon in
full:
In other words, God, who can make no
mistake, made man and woman for a spe-
cific work, and to move in particular
spheres-man to be regnant IN his realm !;
woman to be dominant in hers. The bound
ary line between Italy and Switzerland, be-
tween England and Scotland, is not more
thoroughly marked than this distinction
between the empire masculine and the en-
pire feminine. So entirely dissimilar are
the fields to which God called them, that
you can no more compare them than you
can oxygen and hydrogen, water
and grass, trees and stars All
this talk about the superiority of
one sex to the other sex is an everlasting
waste of ink and speech. A jeweler may
have a scale so delicate that he can weigh
the dust of diamonds; but where are the
scales so delicate that you can weigh in them
affection against affection, sentiment
against sentiment, thought against thought,
soul against SOUL a mans world against a
woman's worldg You come out with your
stereotyped remark, the man is superior TO
woman in intellect; and then i open on my
desk the swarthy, iron-typed, thun-
derbolted writings of Harriet Mar
and George Eliot. You come on
with your stereotyped remark about wom-
ans superiority to man in the item of af-
fection; but | ask you where was there more
capacity to love than in John the disciple,
and in Robert McCheyne, the Scotchman,
and John Summerfield. the Methodist, and
Henry Martin, the missionarys The heart
of those men was so large, that after you
had rolled into it two hemispheres, there
was room still left to marshal the hosts of
heaven, and set up the throne of the eternal
Jehovah. | deny to man the throne intel
lectual. deny to woman the throne affec-
tional No human phraseology will ever
define the spheres, while there is an intui-
ton by which we know when man is in
his realm, and when a woman is in her
realm, and when either of them is out of it..
No bungling Legislature ought TO attempt to
make q definition, or to say: This is the
is that if a woman wants to vote. she
ought TO vote, and that If a
man wants to embroider and keep
house, he ought to be allowed to embroider
and keep house. There are masculine
women and there are effeminatc rnen. My
theory is, that You have no right TO inter
fere with anyone's doing anything that is
righteous. Albany and Washington might
as well decree by legislation how high a
brown -thrasher should fly, or how deep a
trout should plunge, as to seek out the
height or the depth of woman's duty The
question of capacity will settle finally the
whole question, the whole subject. When
a woman is prepared to preach, she will
preach, and neither Conference nor Presby-
terry can hinder her. When a woman is
prepared to move in highest commercial
spheres, she will have great influence on the
Exchange, and no boards of trade can
hinder her. l want woman to understand
that heart and brain can overly any bar
rier that politicians may set up, and that
nothing can keep her back, or keep her
down, but the question of incapacity.
There are women, know, of most uude-
sirable nature, who wander up and down
the country-haviug no homes of their own,
or forsaking their own demonstrating
about their rights; and we know very well
that they themselves are fit neither to vote,
nor fit to keep house. Their mission seems
TO be to humiliate the two sexes at the
thought of what any one of lis might be
come No one would want to live under the
laws that such women would enact, or To
have cast upon society the children that such
women would rear. But | shall show you
this morning that the best rights that
women can own, she already has in her pos
session; that her position in this country at
this time is not one of commiseration, but
one of congratulation: that the grandeur
and power of her realm have never yet been
appreciated; that she sits to-day on throne
so high that all the thrones of earth
piled on top of each other would
not make for her footstool. Here is the
platform on which she stands. Away down
below it are the ballot-box and the Con
gressional assemblage and the legislative
hall. Woman always has voted and always
will vote. Our great grandfathers thought
| they were by their votes putting Washing
ton into the Presidential chair. No. HIS
mother, by the principles she taught him,
and by the habits she inculcated. made him
President. 1t was a Christian mothers
hand dropping the ballot when Lord Bacon
wrote, aud Newton philosophical, and
Alfred the Great governed, and Jonathan
| Edwards thundered of Judgment to come.
How many men there have been in high
political station, who would have been III
| sufficient TO stand the test TO which their
moral principle was put, had it not been
| for a wife's voice that encouraged them To
do right, and a wife's prayer that sounded
louder than the clamor of partisanshipl
Why, my friends, the right of suffrage, as
we men exercise it, seems to be feeble
thing. You, a Christian man, come up to
the ballot-box and you drop your vote.
Right after you comes libertine, or a sot
the offscouring Of the street-and he
drops his vote; and his vote counteracts
yours But if in the quiet Of home life a
daughter by her Christian demeanor, a
wife by her industry, a mother by her faith
fulness, casts a vote in the right direction,
then nothing can resist il, and the influence
Of that vote will throb through the eterni-
ties.
My chief anxiety then is, not that woman
have other rights accorded her, but that
she, by the grace Of God, rise up to the ap.
preciation of the glorious rights she already
possesses This morning l shall only have
time to speak of one grand and all-absorb-
ing right that every woman has, and that
is To make home happy. That realm no
one has ever disputed with her. Men may
come at noon or at night and they tarry a
comparatively little while; but she, all day
long, governs it, beauties IL, sanctifies it.
IL is within her power to make IL the most
attractive place on earth. IL is the only
calm harbor in this world. You know as
we'll as do that this outside world and the
business world, is a long scene of jostle and
contention. The man who has dollar
struggles to keep IT.; the man who has it not